Tiger Pride: Muskegon Heights schools, city share rich history

Hundreds of fans greet the 1954 Class A state basketball champion Muskegon Heights team as they arrive in downtown Muskegon Heights. The Tigers defeated Flint Northern 43-41 in overtime. Muskegon Chronicle file photo. Photo available for sale please call 231-683-2363 and leave a message, we will return your call.

Part one of a three-part series examining the history and pride of Muskegon Heights Public Schools

MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, MI -- The black and white photograph says so much: Throngs of people crowded into downtown Muskegon Heights to welcome back their hometown heroes.

It is taken from above, looking down at the corner of Peck Street and Broadway Avenue, a Greyhound bus surrounded by men, women and children, some of them holding signs. Photographers on a platform capture the victorious scene.

The year was 1954 and the heroes were the Muskegon Heights High School basketball team, arriving home with the state Class A basketball title.

Just one photograph tells the story of a city in love with its team -- with its high school. It shows a vibrant downtown, one where merchants proudly displayed photographs of its sports teams and where shoppers crowded the streets.

Muskegon Heights is a far cry from the one in an old photograph. Stores have moved out, shoppers have disappeared. The factories that employed many of those who turned out that sunny day have gone away too.

But there is one thing the photograph shows that hasn’t changed, not yet anyway: The connection the city has to its school district.

“It is all one – the city and the school district,” said James Burton, a 1978 graduate of Muskegon Heights High School. “It is Muskegon Heights, period.”

The 1957 Class A state basketball champion Muskegon Heights team poses for a photo. The Tigers defeated Detroit Austin 61-49 to claim the championship. Muskegon Chronicle file photo. Photo available for sale please call 231-683-2363 and leave a message, we will return your call.

It could be argued that 1954, or thereabouts, was Muskegon Heights’ heyday. Enrollment at the high school was reaching its peak. Employment was robust and the city was filled with working class people who kept the factories for which the city was founded humming.

It also was the year that Muskegon Heights Public Schools hired its first black teacher: John E. Sydnor.

“I can’t imagine having a better upbringing,” said his classmate, Gary Mast. “The Heights was everything.”

African Americans had started arriving in large numbers a dozen or so years earlier, recruited by the war-time factories that were the backbone of America’s “Arsenal of Democracy.” Muskegon Heights was segregated back then, remember those who lived there at the time.

Many African Americans lived in the Fairview Homes projects constructed in 1943 over the objections of white city leaders to ease the severe housing shortage blacks encountered when they arrived from the south.

But there was racial harmony among the students, about 25 percent of whom were black. There were Lithuanians too, along with Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks and Greeks.

“The most important things I remember were friendships and those friendships crossed racial lines,” said Gene Young, a member of the class of 1959.

Students came from all over Muskegon County to attend Muskegon Heights High, one of just a few high schools in the area. Of course, cross-town rival Muskegon High was there at the time, and down south there was Grand Haven High, while out in the boondocks was North Muskegon High.

School buses would line the streets, bringing students from places like Fruitport and Ravenna, though the city kids walked.

“You rushed to go to go school,” said Ruby Briggs, class of 1959. “You didn’t want to miss school … we just wanted to be in school.”

There were student activities for just about anything you could imagine: Clubs for future teachers, engineers and nurses as well as thespians and of course athletes. The musical productions were legendary and the debate team was a force to be reckoned with, regularly bringing home state trophies from 1929, just eight years after the high school was founded, to 1965.

And the basketball teams, they were legendary too, bringing home state trophies in 1954, 1956 and 1957 – a run that wouldn’t be repeated until the 1970s and the state champs of 1974, 1978 and 1979.

“We admit we grew up in the great days,” Young said.

They are old friends – “friends for life,” Jackson said.

Mast, Young, Jackson and Briggs went to school together more than 50 years ago and still embrace when they get together. Two of them black, two of them white, they share memories of a town and a school district at its apex.

Together they worry about the future. They worry about whether the district, now under control of an emergency manager, will be forced to close under the weight of its $12 million debt. They worry what that will mean to the city that Jackson and Briggs, who are brother and sister, still call home.